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Databricks acquires Row Zero to add large-scale spreadsheets to Genie AI assistant

Databricks acquired Row Zero, a Seattle startup whose spreadsheet software handles up to 1 billion rows, to add a spreadsheet interface to its Genie AI assistant. The price was not disclosed.

AI News Feed · 2026-09-25 08:42

Row Zero raised $13 million before the deal. Its backers included local startup funds and Wes McKinney, a prominent software engineer best known for his work on open-source data management tools, according to SiliconANGLE.

The company's spreadsheet software supports as many as 1 billion rows, compared with Excel's limit of 1,048,576 rows and Google Sheets' support for about ten times as much data per file as Excel. That capacity allows Row Zero to serve a broader range of data analytics use cases.

Row Zero runs every spreadsheet in a dedicated Amazon EC2 instance. The company's co-founders, Breck Fresen and Nick End, held technical roles at the cloud giant before launching the startup in 2021. The dedicated-instance approach also speeds up large data processing workflows, and Row Zero says it can filter, reorganize, summarize and visualize millions of rows near-instantaneously.

Users who need to perform more complicated data science tasks can write Python code from scratch or use Python analytics libraries. Supported modules include pandas, one of the open-source projects created by Row Zero investor Wes McKinney.

Built-in connectors can copy records from cloud data platforms such as Databricks into a spreadsheet. When the original version of a record changes, Row Zero refreshes the spreadsheet. The system also syncs data in the other direction, allowing users to copy the results of an analysis carried out in Row Zero back to the linked cloud data platform.

For users who do not want to perform analyses manually, Row Zero offers a built-in AI assistant designed to automate tasks such as summarizing and visualizing data.

Databricks says the acquisition will help enhance Genie, the AI assistant built into its cloud data platform. The plan is to give Genie users a spreadsheet-based interface for processing records.

Genie is available in three versions. Genie One allows users to analyze datasets with natural language prompts. Genie Agents lets companies create customized versions of Genie One with curated datasets. A developer-focused edition is called Genie Code.

The new spreadsheet interface will be supported by three other Databricks products: Genie Ontology, Unity Catalog and Unity Gateway. Genie Ontology helps the assistant interpret company-specific business terms, while Unity Catalog and Unity Gateway are intended to ensure that AI initiatives comply with an organization's governance policies.

"As more finance, operations, and go-to-market teams adopt Genie, incorporating a seamless spreadsheet experience is a must-have," said Databricks co-founder and vice president of engineering Patrick Wendell.

The spreadsheet product will continue to be available as a standalone offering.